


It takes 9 lives to kill a cat

by whichstiel



Series: Season 12 Codas [24]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Death, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s12e23 All Along the Watchtower, Gen, Resurrection, episode coda, vengeance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 00:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11024550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: The queen is dead.Long live the queen.





	It takes 9 lives to kill a cat

**One**

Highwaymen were always made out to be terribly romantic but there was nothing romantic about being skewered in the gut by a filthy, lice-ridden beast of a man.

Rowena woke cold, covered in a dismal rainwater mist. She flinched and wrenched her eyes open. The ruined coach, the dead horse, a disemboweled highwayman lay before her, barely visible in the rain-soaked night. Blearily, she craned her neck up to where a man hovered over her. “Eugh,” she said, pressing her hand into his face and pushing it away. “Out of my face, Mondren.”

“Rowena,” he sobbed. “It worked! You're back. Thanks to the lord, you're back.”

Rowena made a face and sat up, fingering the slashed fabric at her waist. “You brought me back?” she asked, surprised.

Mondren positively blubbered. “Yes! Yes, my love.”

Rowena nodded, and her eyes narrowed. Mondren was turning out to be far more useful than she expected. She smiled a simpering smile and curved her hand around his head, teasing the long, rain soaked hairs at the nape of his neck. “Oh, Mondren!” she cried dramatically, “Take me to an inn.”

 

**Two**

Her son made a demon deal. The first she heard of it was from Lyra, that nosy little sneak. “Oh, yes. I hear he's just got a year left now.” Lyra nodded in a satisfied manner. “A ten year deal, of course.”

So Rowena stole The Book and set out for Scotland. She did have a modicum of motherly instinct left, after all. And she did feel a little terrible about leaving him so many years ago. Particularly since he made an asinine deal with a demon, apparently. She always suspected he was mentally deficient.

Though she'd managed to work out an excellent demon-vanquishing hex bag, it was apparently rather useless against hell hounds. Rowena woke after being horrifically shredded to find herself surrounded by the other members of her coven. The Book sat on an adjacent table next to night-black candles.

“We brought you back, Rowena, so that you may be properly punished. You will be cursed,” whispered Olivette in her ear. “Outcast. That is your punishment for stealing from your sisters. A long life without a coven. I look forward to watching your magic wither.”

Rowena clenched her jaw and stared straight at the ceiling. To her right, Lyra snickered. Rowena marked it. She would be the first to die.

 

**Three**

Cars were an absolutely magnificent invention.

Rowena tore down the road, goggles clamped over her eyes, white scarf fluttering in the breeze. Patrick was right. She _would_ fall in love immediately. Rowena crowed with joy.

She crowed with joy, that is, until her whoop cut off with a sudden _URK_. Her neck broke in an instant, the scarf tangled between her neck and the tree branch. Fortunately, she secreted a casket of magic in her leg years ago which now restored her to life. Unfortunately, one of the local farmers watched her resurrection from atop his stupid, gray pony. Rowena set her clothing to rights and stalked back to Patrick's home on foot. She'd pack a bag and disappear within the space of the afternoon before somebody tried to burn her.

Cars were terrible. From now on, it's only hired cars for her.

 

**Four**

Rowena gritted her teeth. “Come on, dearie,” she crooned to the stationary statute sitting just beyond her fingertips. Rowena shoved her arm through the hole just as far as it would go, her shoulder aching where it pressed against the stone. The tomb was quiet and redolent with the smell of earth-chilled dirt.

At last her fingers scrabbled onto the statute and it toppled into her hand. She laughed in triumph, ready to claim its astonishing power. She laughed, that is, until the statue began to smolder.

Rowena tried to drop the statute when it began to burn her hand but only managed to release it when the cursed artifact stole the breath from her lungs. She woke on the floor of the cave. The artifact smiled mockingly up at her, ruby bright and utterly useless to her. Kicking at the stone wall, she snatched up her wide brimmed hat and stalked back out to the sunshine.

She didn't need an ancient artifact. She didn't need anything but the power coursing through her own bones.

 

**Five**

The hunter was dressed all in black cloth wound around her body. She was quick with a blade, Rowena gave her that.

But Rowena was quicker with a hex bag, particularly since the hunter thought she was already dead. She smiled over the hunter's writhing body and examined the polish on her nails. _Hmm._ She really ought to head to her beautician. The sword nicked a nail.

 

**Six**

Lucifer snapped her neck, that insufferable ass.

 

**Seven**

Crowley loves to think he keeps a good secret, but Rowena has known about his little prison toy, Lucifer, for months now. It's only a matter of time before that pig of an archangel wriggles free. Rowena called on an old druidic spell and chipped off a piece of her soul. She dressed her puppet in fine clothing and placed it in a beautiful old hotel. Lucifer, the smoking dead fool, went straight for her trap.

Rowena hunkered down until the day he disappeared from the world, and dreamed about her mega coven as she waited.

 

**Eight**

“Oh, perfect,” Rowena spat, pulling herself from the ocean. The beach shone with white-gold sand and was lined with lush green palm trees. It was idyllic. It was paradise.

Except she appeared to be entirely alone, the smoking wreckage of the plane belching flames in the shallow reef surrounding the island.

A volleyball floated to shore and she grimaced at it before hitching up her sequined dress. “Well, looks like it's you and me.”

Rowena kicked at a sea shell. “Bollucks.”

 

**Nine**

In the end, a cup of tea was Rowena's undoing. The poison worked quickly and the waitress pulled her to the back room, ostensibly to help her to the bathroom to vomit. What the waitress actually did was slice the casket from her leg. Rowena died, choking on her own spit, with a hole in her leg and vengeance in her heart.

 

**Oh, Hell**

Most demons take years to develop the black eyes. Torture, and bowing, and scraping, and subservience whittle away their humanity until there's just rage left over.

Rowena wakes in fire with a smile. Her son was handed Hell on a silver platter by a bored prince and squandered it, the idiot. But she knows better.

Her insurrection is swift, fueled by centuries of spellcraft and the heady advantage of insider knowledge.

She enters the world again only five years after her death and smokes into a lovely red-haired body. She's got a brand to uphold, after all.

Rowena smiles as she glides past Olivette, spinning in her wheel. Rowena strokes the velvety gown hugging her lithe hips and smirks. “It's a new era for Hell, my dear. One ruled by witchcraft.” She stares out of the windows of her palace, a sleek high rise building in the center of New York. “The Mega Coven will rise again.”

**Author's Note:**

> And that's it for my season 12 episode codas! Thanks for reading along. This was fun \o/
> 
> Thanks for reading! I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/whichstiel) and [Tumblr](http://whichstiel.tumblr.com/) @ whichstiel. You may also like the Supernatural recap and gif blog I co-write/curate, [Shirtless Sammy](https://shirtlesssammy.tumblr.com/).


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